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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

I've come to associate those things with snake oil. They're right up there with "Free trial, but you need to put in a credit card." Sure, some legit services use those techniques, but they're a red flag that they might be a pain to deal with if you choose to back out.

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A lot of legit services take a cc with trial sign up to separate the people who might pay from the people who would pay if it was the right solution. The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do.

I see more and more startups using stripe, between that and the ability to do chargeback with that cc company, I worry less about it. The chargeback dispute is quite powerful.

> The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do.

Not sure about that. Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? Suspend the account after the trial until the user logs in and confirms the renewal?

> The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do.

> Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account?

I suspect we sometimes conflate "right" and "convenient". I am curious, don't most people (especially those with technical chops) just drop a calendar event as a reminder?

Those would also be good ideas.

The worst scenario is when the subscription begins and the user has forgotten the cancelation date. A link could be embedded in the email to say yes or no. It must be profitable not to do this for some.

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